Americans live in a disposable society. We've progressed to this point gradually and over decades, and I don't know exactly when it happened, but we've been here now for a while. If you've read any of my previous posts about repairing appliances and computers, you know I'm not fond of it. I believe a quality product should be built to provide service for a reasonable amount of time, and commonly worn parts should be available cheaply so do-it-yourselfers can extend the item's life.
That's not what we have now, and we haven't had it for a while. Today it's easier to throw something away, even in still good condition, and replace it. And this attitude is not confined to hardware. It's happening with relationships and marriages too. The hardware I can sort of understand. Corporations running the manufacturing want to keep making more money and they'll make more selling new printers and cars than they will individual parts. Don't get me started on the shenanigans Hewlett Packard is pulling these days with printer ink and toner. The relationships thing is also problematic but more about humans becoming increasingly focused on self and laziness rather than the particulars of an endless need to increase profit.
That brings me to this post. It's about my old HP Laserjet 5P laser printer. I bought it new around 1996 and it served me well through nearly thirty years of light but regular use. The only thing I ever had to worry about was replacing toner. About ten years ago, the toner cartridges started becoming more scarce. HP had long moved on from the old 5P and wasn't really into making supplies for printers that were older than any of the executives that still worked there and were in small enough numbers that it wasn't profitable.
I got by on third-party toner for a while and occasionally still picked up one of the last intact OEM cartridges when I could find one on sale. Through Windows 98, Windows 7, Windows 10, and the birth of my children and their passage to college, my 5P soldiered on. It was a great printer, built to last and quite versatile. It had a straight-through paper path so it rarely jammed, and it could handle thicker materials like label sheets and card stock. It also had a small manual feed tray that popped down from the front so I could do a one-off print if I needed to do it on special paper. Those don't sound like special features when compared to modern printers, but remember this 5P came out during much earlier days of PC computing. It also can print wirelessly, although through and old IRDA port instead of Wi-Fi.
I haven't needed to print large volumes of documents in the last decade or so, but would still occasionally print important contracts. The 5P also proved quite useful in recent years as I printed shipping labels for all the stuff I sold for charity on eBay.
Then, last year, the printer started to falter. The print would become increasingly faint and it got progressively worse. I scoured printer support forums looking for ideas on how to solve this problem, but after cleaning the transfer roller and trying yet another new toner cartridge, it persisted. I'd invested somewhere around $80 in toner cartridges in the last year trying to fix this but I'm now pretty sure toner isn't the issue. I see that I can buy a new fuser, transfer roller, or even laser scanner assembly for about $20 each but if I guess wrong and end up having to get all three, now that's another $60 I'll be out and there's no guarantee that'll solve it. I've reached the point of diminishing returns, where any more money spent on repair attempts will cost more than a new printer.
In addition, the 5P has just plain started to degrade. The four rubber feet on the bottom liquified into goopy messes years ago. The plastic used in the housing and parts on the interior has become brittle. A few years ago when I opened the back access panel a couple tabs broke off, although the printer continued to work. Whenever I open the power port panel or serial port panel, another piece breaks. Every time I pick the printer up now I worry something else will snap off.
Is it time to cut my losses? I can get a new monochrome laser that'll be smaller, lighter, support wireless printing, and perform duplex printing. It'll run less than $150 (the 5P cost $800) and should give me several years of use, and toner cartridges should be easier to find. I still need to print occasionally, and right now my workaround is to use sneakernet to print on my second printer from a USB drive. I can probably live with the workaround, but it is a hassle.
It sometimes feels like admitting defeat. But nothing lasts forever, and twenty-seven years is a darn good run. It's time to accept moving on. HP Laserjet 5P, you were a legend. This isn't a divorce, it's a funeral. It's not "get out," it's "goodbye and thank you."
